


Transfiguring

by Celandine



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: F/M, Ficlet, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-08-11
Updated: 2007-08-11
Packaged: 2017-10-12 16:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/126716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Celandine/pseuds/Celandine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thirty years after the war, Hermione's life is about to change.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Transfiguring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Alisanne](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alisanne/gifts).



Hermione sat in a wizarding café in Prague and ordered strong coffee. Coward, she admonished herself. But her children were grown – if things had fallen apart with Ron, these past two years, she could run away to lick her wounds when their marriage finally ended, and it would hurt no one. Another week, perhaps two, and then she'd return, take up the broken threads of her life again.

She blew across the fragrant liquid and took a sip, scanning the room absently, out of habit. There could be no one she knew here. Except... she frowned.

Against the far wall a man sat hunched over his coffee and newspaper. Iron-grey hair fell across his face, but the profile – she had seen it before, she was sure, but the man with that unmistakably beaky nose had been dead for thirty years. Harry had seen him die; the Death Eaters had destroyed his body. Yet the longer she looked, the more certain she became.

One exile to another, she went to him without thought.

"You're not dead."

He did not glance up, but said, "Your grasp of the obvious is most impressive, Miss Granger."

Hermione didn't correct his use of the name. There was a certain fittingness that he thought her still the schoolgirl she had been. Questions flooded into her mind – how had he survived? Why was he here in Prague? What had he done for three decades, and how had he concealed himself for so long? But she asked none of them, only sipping from the cup she'd carried over from her own table.

The silence stretched between them, surprisingly comfortable. Hermione finished her coffee and waited. At last he said, "You've changed."

She refrained from repeating his own earlier remark. "I have." She did not add, "So have you." There need be no pretense with him – this man could be, was, her equal. When he finally looked at her, she met his gaze without flinching.

The past – was past. Hermione resolved to take the present moment and shape the future that she desired.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for alisanne, at the request of Marta, who suggested Snape/Hermione, prompt "transfiguration."


End file.
